Chronic illness adds stress to patients’ relationships with their partners, and the stress can be compounded for a debilitating but ‘invisible’ and unpredictable illness like ME/CFS. Could alleviation of this stress alter the physiological factors driving symptom severity?

Michael H Antoni, PhD, a specialist in “psycho-neuro-immunology” at the University of Miami (Coral Gables, FL), is recruiting 150 men and women diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and their partners - to trial an experimental 10-week patient-partner focused stress management intervention, delivered by videophone.

• Patients/partners in the control group will receive videophone delivered educational information about healthy behavior including nutrition, sleep and other factors.

The objective is to determine the effect that the patient-partner stress management intervention may have on the frequency & severity "of CFS symptoms, and on related psychosocial and neuroimmune processes.”

Measures: This will involve measuring changes in perceived stress, depressed mood, and social processes, as well as changes in the daily salivary cortisol pattern and ratios of inflammation-producing to inflammation-modulating cytokines ([IL-1? + IL-6 + TNF-?]:[IL-13 + IL-10]). The measurements will be made at baseline, and at 5 months and 9 months after therapy completion.

Criteria: Patients of all ages 21 to 75 are eligible. Key inclusion criteria are having a partner, English fluency, no prior psychiatric treatment for a serious disorder such as psychosis or suicidality, and no co-morbid condition or medical treatment that is affecting the immune system.